Power outage creates desperation at Lakeland apartment complex

Tuesday

Sep 12, 2017 at 10:56 PMSep 13, 2017 at 10:29 AM

Gary White @garywhite13

LAKELAND — From the outside, St. Luke’s Life Center appears unaffected by Hurricane Irma. The sun shone down Tuesday afternoon on a trio of four-story buildings at the apartment complex, giving them a glow worthy of an advertising brochure.

Inside, though, an agonizing scene unfolded, and it was a direct result of the hurricane. With an elevator left inoperable by a power outage, a blind woman with kidney disease struggled to climb two sets of stairs and reach her apartment on the second floor.

Ebonye Mitchell, who had just returned from a dialysis session, held desperately to a handrail as another resident, Michael Joseph, stood behind her, struggling to keep her from falling backward.

“My leg’s weak,” Mitchell, 35, moaned. “Oh, my gosh.”

Mitchell faltered, nearly falling to her knees, before a younger man bolted down from the second floor and helped to hold her up. Jovari Joseph, 19, finally managed to virtually carry Mitchell to the top of the stairs.

Mitchell is one of many residents with health problems who live in St. Luke’s Life Center, a complex on Quincy Street. Those who rely on wheelchairs or walkers have been essentially trapped on the upper floors since power to the three buildings cut out Sunday evening as the hurricane thrashed Lakeland with 100-mph winds.

“I’ve got to get away from here,” Mitchell said as she sat in a hallway outside the door to her apartment. “I can’t be here.”

Joseph, whose grandmother lives on the first floor, soon brought a chair for Mitchell to sit on as she recovered. He then helped get her onto the couch in her sweltering apartment, where Michelle Wilson, a personal care attendant, handed her food and a drink.

Mitchell requires dialysis sessions three days a week, normally going Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Power problems at the facility pushed her Monday session back to Tuesday, and she expected to return again Thursday.

She desperately hopes power will be restored to the building by then so that she can use the elevator.

“It’s ridiculous,” Joseph said of the situation. “A lady right there” — he pointed toward an apartment door — “she can’t walk, and she’s stuck in there two days in a row.”

Joseph said his grandmother, who lives on the first floor, relies on an oxygen machine and had to go to the hospital because the lack of power and heat had aggravated her breathing difficulties.

Doug Wright, who lives on the third floor of Mitchell’s building, said many St. Luke residents are particularly vulnerable when the elevators aren’t working.

“There are a lot of senior, disabled people in all three of these buildings, and man, they are having a time,” said Wright, 59. “There are people in this building and the other buildings who are on oxygen. … They can’t get upstairs in their wheelchairs and their walkers. Basically most of them are just trapped on their floors because they can’t get up and down the stairs.”

The office at St. Luke’s Life Center was closed Tuesday. A sign posted near the door said the office closed Friday at noon.

St. Luke’s Life Center is operated by Richman Property Services of Tampa. A request for comment was not returned by Tuesday afternoon.

Wright said he understands that the management has no control over restoring power to the buildings, but he said poor maintenance has increased the dangers for residents. Emergency lights are not working in the hallways and stairwells, he said, making it so dark at night that he can’t see his hand held before his face.

Another resident, Brenda Lane, said she nearly fell down the stairs Monday night when she ventured into the stairwell with a flashlight. She said she has had her hip and knee replaced and has problems with stability.

“If they have to come every day and change the batteries, they’ve got to keep those emergency lights going,” Wright said. “Somebody is going to fall and end up breaking their neck just trying to get in and out.”

Wright’s next-door neighbor, Debby Jeffries, is one of the residents who relies on an elevator to reach their apartments. Jeffries, 66, said she has cerebral palsy, fibromyalgia and arthritis.

She uses a manual wheelchair in her apartment and a power wheelchair elsewhere.

Jeffries, who has lived at St. Luke’s since 2008, said she considered evacuating to a shelter Saturday but changed her mind and decided to stay.

“I’m very upset with the fact that these lights in the hallway and in the stairwell aren’t working,” she said. “This is not young people in here. It started as a 55-plus (apartment) and for the handicapped. Holy Moses, they need to upgrade their safety lights. These things have to be addressed.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

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